The International Space Station's three newest crew members are beginning their second week familiarizing themselves with the orbital lab's operations and systems. They and the other three Expedition 54 crew mates are also busy today with cargo operations, space science and station maintenance.

Today - Rodent Research 6 (RR-6): In support of the on-going RR-6 investigation, the crew removed the mice and restocked the rodent habitats with new food bars in addition to cleaning the lids and interiors cages of the habitats.

This is NASA's 2018 'To Do' list. The work we do, which will continue in 2018, helps the United States maintain its world leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery.
Launches, discoveries and more exploration await in the year ahead.

Don't be fooled! The cosmic swirl of stars in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image may seem tranquil and unassuming, but this spiral galaxy, known as ESO 580-49, actually displays some explosive tendencies.

Six Expedition 54 crew members will spend Christmas orbiting Earth sharing a traditional meal and opening goodies delivered on recent cargo missions to the International Space Station. Veteran crew member Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos is spending his third holiday season in space.

Speeding through the atmosphere high above Jupiter's equator is an east-west jet stream that reverses course on a schedule almost as predictable as a Tokyo train's. Now, a NASA-led team has identified which type of wave forces this jet to change direction.

Kelp forests grow along coastlines worldwide, largely hidden from view. Like rainforests, they're among the planet's most important ecosystems: beautiful but fragile habitats for a wide array of plant and animal species.

A team of U.S. astronomers studying the star RZ Piscium has found evidence suggesting its strange, unpredictable dimming episodes may be caused by vast orbiting clouds of gas and dust, the remains of one or more destroyed planets.

Today - Zebrafish Muscle 2: Following the fixation and stowing of experiment units (EUs) from Group A earlier this week, today the crew performed fixation on the EUs from Groups B and C and then stowed them in the refrigerator of the Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI).

NASA's Scott Tingle, Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency joined Expedition 54 Commander Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and crewmates Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA aboard the International Space Station when the hatches between the Soyuz spacecraft and the orbiting laboratory officially opened at 5:55 a.m. EST. The welcoming ceremony will begin shortly.

When scientists recorded a rippling in space-time, followed within two seconds by an associated burst of light observed by dozens of telescopes around the globe, they had witnessed, for the first time, the explosive collision and merger of two neutron stars.

An experiment in space manufacturing and an enhanced study of solar energy are among the research currently heading to the International Space Station following Friday's launch of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at 10:36 a.m. EST.

Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

At 9:02 p.m. EST, the hatch closed between the Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station in preparation for undocking. Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineers Paolo Nespoli of ESA (European Space Agency) and Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos are scheduled to undock their Soyuz at 12:14 a.m. NASA Television will air live coverage of the undocking beginning at 11:45 p.m.

Scientists were already excited to learn this summer that New Horizons' next flyby target - a Kuiper Belt object a billion miles past Pluto - might be either peanut-shaped or even two objects orbiting one another.

The SpaceX Dragon resupply ship is at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida counting down to its launch to the International Space Station Tuesday at 11:46 a.m. EST. Meanwhile, the six-member Expedition 53 crew is preparing to split up this week.

Astronomers have used two Australian radio telescopes and several optical telescopes to study complex mechanisms that are fuelling jets of material blasting away from a black hole 55 million times more massive than the Sun.

Scientists from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) joined in the recent international effort to observe -- and create a detailed profile of -- the first known large object from interstellar space to pass through our solar system.

Observations of two galaxies made with the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope suggest that large galaxies formed faster than scientists had previously thought.

Two International Space Station crews are preparing to swap places at the orbital lab next week. In the midst of the crew swap activities, Commander Randy Bresnik also sent down dramatic photographs of the wildfires in California.

After delivering almost 7,400 pounds of cargo to support dozens of science experiments from around the world, the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo spacecraft has departed the International Space Station. At 8:11 a.m., Expedition 53 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA gave the command to release Cygnus.

NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, has just passed the shortest-daylight weeks of the long Martian year with its solar panels in encouragingly clean condition for entering a potential dust-storm season in 2018.